Review: Samsung Galaxy Prevail

The Prevail's display measures 3.2-inches across the diagonal and packs in 320 x 480 pixels. That gives it a fairly dense pixel count, and the result is a screen that looks really good. Text, icons and graphics are all smooth, and you can only see pixels if you hold the Prevail really close to your eyes. As far as brightness goes, it was great indoors, but lost a lot of luster when taken outdoors. In bright sunlight, I was unable to see the display at all when attempting to take pictures. A super AMOLED this is not.

Signal

The Prevail is a CDMA smartphone. Boost uses Sprint-Nextel's iDEN network for many of its devices, but thankfully gave the Prevail access to the faster EVDO 3G network. That said, it performed on par with other Sprint devices I have tested in the metro NYC area. In my house, it held onto two bars consistently, but lost the signal altogether in my basement. In Manhattan, it did well at finding Sprint's network, though data sessions sometimes crashed. The Prevail didn't drop any calls, though.

Sound

The calls I conducted with the Prevail were good for the most part. Earpiece volume is great, though it distorts a bit when set to the max. Distortion aside, putting it up all the way will let you hear calls in all but the noisiest environments. Clarity was also decent, but I did hear some hissing and static now and then. The speakerphone was acceptably loud, and free of distortion when set up all the way. Ringtones and other alerts pack plenty of oomph. The vibrate alert has a video arcade quality to it (it's not silent, it actually makes a little bit of noise), and it's more than strong enough to let you know that there's a call or SMS waiting for you.

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Battery

Since the Prevail uses less power-hungry hardware (smaller display, slower processor), I found battery life to be really good. From a full charge, the Prevail easily made it through 1.5 days with email and social networks actively pinging the network all the time. For a smartphone, that's better than average.